By: Roxanne Cortner
New gowns and gloves must be put on every hour or before entering any patient’s room. Vitals are checked before a tech sets up their desk for the shift and are checked again every four hour. Patients are bed ridden and confined to a room and most people don’t know how long they have been there. No contact can be made on skin from anything in a patient’s room. This is the nightly protocol for a nurse in the COVID-19 unit of a hospital.
2020 was a year of uncertainty brought on by the sudden viral disease COVID-19. For some, COVID-19 is seen as not a big deal. For others, the reality is COVID-19 is a matter that should be taken seriously. Lindsey Ward, patient care technician, and Amber Biggers, staff nurse, stress the severity of COVID-19 as they see everyday the impact it is having on their patients’ lives.
“We’ve had a lot more deaths since COVID-19 hit and sent a lot more patients to the ICU. The whole hospital is at capacity other than the women’s center,” Biggers said.
COVID-19 severely impacts the lungs making it harder to breathe, and some patients have developed pneumonia.
Catherine Priest, a patient care tech, described of COVID-19 unit having a lot of patients hooked up to oxygen machines and machines she had never heard of before through nursing school.
There is no cure for COVID-19 and the new vaccine is only available to select groups of people as they carry out phases. Viruses must have time to go away on their own, so nurses and doctors are treating the symptoms of COVID-19 such as pneumonia, cough, and cold.
Plasma transfusions have been effective in treating COVID-19 patients. Survivors of COVID-19 are encouraged to donate plasma within three months of testing positive for COVID-19. Survivors carry antibodies that have been beneficial for those battling COVID-19.
Nurses have also found it effective for patients to lay prone-on their stomach. Prone position allows for the lungs to open and relieves pressure on the lungs which allows more oxygen to the lungs.
Priest shared a story of a guy who was maxed out on oxygen and they tried everything for him and nothing was working. They got him to lay prone and within a couple hours he barely needed oxygen assistance.
As the patient technicians and nurses care for these patients, everything is monitored and everything must be done carefully. Being “gowned up” is most important as technicians interact with patients and give them their treatments.
While being “gowned up,” the nurse or technician is the only one allowed to enter a patient’s room and if something were to happen, a code happens, a technician has to determine if they would break protocol or if someone else is attending to a patient do they drop everything and help?
“Nurses will come only in the doorway and throw the supplies at us because they cannot touch us,” Ward said.
If a patient feels bad enough that they are at the hospital, but they have the right to refuse treatment. Patients who are refusing treatment are asked to sign an “against medical advice” form and sent home.
Biggers said that Zinc is the only Food and Drug Administration approved mineral proven effective in battling viral diseases. Biggers also shared that her hospital is giving patients vitamin C as a way to prevent deterioration while in isolation.
More vaccines are being made and the U.S. is adding more phases to allow more of the population to get the vaccine. Nurses are cautioning the U.S. to stay aware of the virus and its symptoms until the vaccine is more accessible and the U.S. can begin moving towards a new normal.